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What is the role and importance of Physical Education at School?

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Physical education is certainly one of the most awaited classes by children and adolescents. Whenever the physical education teacher arrives for his class, the school environment is filled with positive energy coming from most children and adolescents. 

Physical education is permeated with fun aspects involving games and even concentration activities for students who do not have a sporting profile, but who like to challenge themselves. 

We consider the benefits of school physical education for the lives of children and adolescents innumerable, among them, issues of quality of life, body awareness, socialization, stress reduction, among other benefits. In addition, there is the enormous fun that these classes promote.

What is physical education at school? 

Physical education is a curricular component that involves a lot of fun, however, it is based on a teaching methodology and objectives that go beyond games and sports, as they improve behaviors through skills established by the National Common Curricular Base – BNCC. 

Thus, we are talking about the curricular component that brings, in a thematic way, the various body practices, from diversification of manifestations and possibilities of expression of social meanings that we acquire over time.

When students are learning a determined dance in a physical education class, in addition to the body practices present in the movements worked by the teacher, there is also cultural learning that contributes to the development process of children and adolescents. 

In schools physical education is not just the practice of sports to add only those students who have the aptitude for the development of sports categories, but it converges to the inclusion of all students, working with respect for different cultures, cultural manifestations, and each individual’s body characteristics.

What are the goals of school physical education?

The main objective of school physical education is to promote students’ interest in exercises so that they become aware of the health benefits promoted through this practice; besides stimulating cognitive functions that involve attention, logical reasoning, and memory, consequently improving students’ school performance.

We cannot forget the objectives related to mutual respect, solidarity, and appreciation of the other, learning to work as a team, and respecting rules through empathic attitudes, the acceptance of different cultures, and different body expressions.

We can highlight a list of objectives that dialogue with the educational skills of physical education: 

  • Understand the body culture of movement;
  • Being able to plan and apply strategies to solve challenges;
  • Reflect on the relationship between the practice of physical education and the bodily benefits involving physical and mental health;
  • Identify the variety of body patterns critically and reflectively; Develop non-discriminatory behaviors about the body of the other and your own body;
  • Acquire values from the socialization and practice of physical education;
  • Knowing physical education as a right, to experience and enjoy and also create games and jokes in diversity and collectively. 

What are the benefits of school physical education?

School physical education promotes countless benefits for all those involved in this process.

When we are talking about school physical education, we must keep in mind that its advantages permeate the classroom, reaching the daily lives of children and adolescents in their various social experiences. 

Among the benefits of this practice, we can list some unquestionable advantages promoted by it: 

  • Motor development
  • Socialization
  • Personal growth
  • Increase in self-esteem
  • Body awareness
  • Stress reduction
  • Life’s Quality

Motor development 

The motor development of children must be stimulated based on the possibilities of age, considering the games and jokes developed with the children in early childhood education, as well as the sports practices initiated with children from elementary school, in the early years, extending until the final years. 

With that in mind, the practice of physical education develops children’s and adolescents’ motor skills to work on their spatial and temporal organization, as well as balance and global and fine motor skills.

Socialization

School is a favorable environment for children and adolescents to socialize with people who have different cultural backgrounds, allowing them to develop self-confidence in their relationships, based on group interactions.

It will also allow children and adolescents to deal with their physical and psychological limitations, as well as those of their peers, developing respect.

Personal growth 

Personal growth is one of the countless advantages of school physical education, considering that games and jokes, as well as the practice of sports, can transform the lives of children and adolescents.

We can find several examples of people who had their lives transformed by sports practices, because they found the physical education within the school, the incentive for this purpose. 

The benefits of this practice include living in a group, learning to deal with rules, and reducing stress. 

Increase in self-esteem

Physical education improves people’s love for themselves by providing well-being. Consequently, increasing the state of well-being will improve the self-esteem of children and especially adolescents, because of their transformation bodies moment.

Corporal conscience

This benefit includes issues related to physical potential, as well as the body’s limitations for some kinds of exercises, contributing to self-knowledge in this essential phase of training.

Stress reduction

Despite believing that stress is one of the evils of adult life, it is noted that many children and adolescents currently live under stress, due to all the demands of the social environment in which they are inserted.

Thus, when we think of physical education, we have a school discipline that provides stress reduction, caused by the possibility of releasing physical and emotional tension, as well as maintaining relationships that help to dissipate stress. 

Life’s Quality

The practice of physical education certainly provides a better quality of life for all those who practice it.

This is perceived from the improvement of physical health, in the reduction of the risks of diseases such as arterial hypertension, high cholesterol, respiratory diseases, and even obesity, allied to the development of sports skills. 

These benefits do not stop there, the quality of life provided by the practice of physical education is also noticed in the emotional and psychological health of many children and adolescents.

How important is physical education?

Given the advantages pointed out about physical education, its importance is unquestionable for children and adolescents at any stage of their development. 

In this way, education promotes for the student, in its entirety, the improvement of aspects such as body awareness and socialization, which has numerous benefits for the personal formation of students, associating physical and emotional aspects from its practice.

The practice of school physical education

In the initial and final years of elementary school, physical education is divided according to the BNCC into some thematic units that can be classified as follows: games, sports, gymnastics, wrestling, and main adventure activities. 

Within these thematic units, there is a wide range of activities that can be carried out with children and adolescents that they love most of the time.

This process must be mediated and facilitated by the teacher for good practice and benefits.

Early childhood education and physical education

Physical education within early childhood education adds many benefits and possibilities for activities and games to children’s daily lives. 

Working laterality, coordination, body scheme, and spatial and temporal structuring are one of the benefits of physical education in early childhood education. 

Play brings countless benefits to the development of children. Check out some possible ways:

  1. Rabbit Hole
  2. Hide and seek
  3. Catch
  4. Silly 
  5. Statue
  6. Sports initiation

Physical education in elementary school

Considering the thematic units mentioned, we can list some possible activities that will help teachers to work physical education with their students and increasingly develop their creativity and imagination. 

1. Musical chairs

2. Ball run

3. Hot potato

4. Jump rope

5. Living dead

These are games that can be used with elementary school students, in the early years, and also to work on various aspects of children’s development.

In the final years, they have defined sports preferences and the dances bring together interesting social aspects for this age. 

The school is a development space that adds the most varied learning possibilities, promoting socialization and the benefits of health and well-being through immersion in the practice of sports, games, and games, and contributing to learning, with the knowledge necessary for the personal and professional lives of students. 

St. Nicholas School has an international teaching proposal that provides its students with security and enhances their learning process safely, with the practice of sports activities that value diversity and human formation.

Visit St. Nicholas School and bring your child to the best private school in São Paulo.

Click on the link to apply now!https://stnicholas.com.br/admissions/.

Author

  • brasão st nicholas school

    St. Nicholas School is an international school whose goal is to prepare every child for their own success. Through the IB curriculum, we spark a passion for learning and encourage children to be curious, inquisitive and critical thinkers. Our students are equipped with interpersonal skills and an international mindset, which allows them to promote significant transformations in the world.
    Schedule a visit to our campuses (Alphaville and Pinheiros), and discover the scene of a truly international education, which provides freedom, expression, autonomy and cultural exchange.

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